Happy New Year for 2010 from the ICT Tutor blog.

In 2009 there were a total of 12 blog posts posted on the ICT-Tutor blog, including this one.

We also move web hosts once or was it twice. In 2010 we may take a new direction, or close down or amalgamate or something, very uncertain times we live in.

Part 4 of Andy Roberts video blog series of tutorials about image editing was all about how to photograph a ghost.

So here’s the embedded video which show you how to superimpose part of one photograph on top of another, adjusting the transparency to suitable effect.

If you want to make use of the pictures used in the example then head over to the post on Andy Roberts blog entitled:
how-to-photograph-a-ghost

Theatre Breaks Video Shows how to Storyboard

Here’s a very easy to use storyboarding tool that’s lots of fun as well.

All you need to do is write a playscript, then input the dialogue text to the animation generator and it will create an action orientated cartoon movie video with talking head and body characters.

What a great way to visualise how your playscript might work when it’s performed by real actors.

The softare used is called xtranormal

I have a big imac 24″ at my disposal normally, but for portability I decided to go with a Windows laptop, mainly for economic purposes. There’s a big computer fair near where I live every weekend selling mostly hardware at very competitive prices but very little Apple equipment passes through there.

Mostly all I need is a web browser so the platform doesn’t matter much. The first thing I’ve missed so far though is Skitch, the screenshot and annotation utiity for Mac. I tried downloading and installing Jing but that needs to have the .net framework which is another 50Mb download – too much for my mobile dongle.

Wordpress 2.8.1 is out as public release now so I’ve upgraded this blog. I didn’t have any plugin problems, at least none that I’ve noticed so far.

Lesson 2 in the series about Image Editing explores a simple use of the Clone Tool

The video for lesson 1 in the image editing series is now up on the blog together with some hints as to what the remaining 4 lessons will be about.

Seashore is the open source photograph and image editor based on Gimp technology and tailored for Apple mac OS native cocoa environment but the video lesson is fairly basic and applicable to any image editing software that uses layers.

All the pointers are that as the newest generations grow up and take their place, so video will become the most important ICT. This will happen on the internet just as soon as broadband becomes fast enough and ubiquitous, which is happening already to a certain extent. YouTube has become one of the most useful resources for looking up music, for example. Marketers believe that video creates a stronger relationship with viewers than readers of text of listeners to podcasts.

On the other hand there are some distinct disadvantages of video. It tends to be a broadcast medium rather than an interactive community channel for dialogue. Also it can be a slow way of absorbing information. The fast forward button doesn’t work nearly as well as an eyeball scanning over text looking for particular items of interest. As a view, you get lulled into a slow frame of mind, patiently waiting for the video presenter to get to the point!

Now maybe a good time to reflect on the existence of the ICT Tutor blog. I’ll probably use a cut down version of Gibbs Reflective cycle.

What?

So What?

What Next?